She Called Him Mad Until the Dead Proved Him Right

When Renata, the matriarch of our Family, learned that her husband, the old Don, had been broken in the crash they staged to look like an accident, her heart gave out. The only pair of hands that could pull her back from the dark belonged to my wife, the Family's back-room surgeon.

I called her, again and again, until the line finally opened. It was not her voice that answered. It was his.

"Adriana's tied up right now. What's the urgency?"

The taste of copper filled my mouth. "Put Adriana on the line. It's a matter of life and death."

There was a pause, the clink of a glass somewhere behind him, and then her voice, bored, edged with irritation. "Can you chill? I've been slammed all day. Can't I catch a break and have a drink in peace?"

The line went dead.

I called back. Her phone was off.

An hour later, both Renata and the Don had passed.

"Renata's situation is critical. You need to get Dr. Ricci. She's the only one who can handle this."

One of the Family's own, a surgeon who owed her father his life, found me standing frozen outside the infirmary door and grabbed my collar. "What are you waiting for? Move it."

I was torn in two. The old Don lay broken on one table, Renata's heart failing on the other, and I could be in only one place. I had already called. No answer.

My hands would not stay still. I kept redialing her number.

Finally, it connected.

"Adriana, get to the infirmary now. Both your mother and your father... they're fading fast."

The call cut off.

I tried again. Her phone was now off.

Rage and terror rose in the same breath, and I drove my fist into the wall of the corridor until the plaster cracked.

They had taken me in when I was nothing, an enemy's orphan with no blood worth claiming, and raised me as their own. There was no way I could just let go.

When the Doc finally came out from behind the doors, I gave him what he needed in a few clipped words and told him to send word the moment anything changed. Then I went to find Adriana.

She had let it slip once that her old flame, Enzo Barone, had taken rooms near Harmony Gardens, close to the neutral edge of our territory.

On the drive there my grip on the wheel was the only thing holding me together. Twice I nearly put the car through the one in front of me.

I reached the complex and saw them at once, stepping out of a corner shop near the curb.

Enzo carried takeout and a few bottles of beer. Adriana walked at his side, the two of them laughing low and close, like a couple on a first night out.

A delivery bike tore past. Enzo's arm went around her on instinct, his voice dropping. "Careful there."

Adriana laughed and looked down, shy.

My heart sank. But there was no time for what that arm around her did to me.

"Adriana, thank God I found you."

I crossed the space between us.

Her smile vanished. Her brows drew together in displeasure.

"Salvatore, what's this about? Are you tracking me now?"

I had no time to waste. I closed my hand firmly around hers. "We need to go. Now. Your parents are in dire straits."

She pulled her hand back sharply, her face hardening. "Why are you being so dark? Don't make up terrible things about my parents."

I understood her disbelief. News like this does not land clean.

There was no time for a gentle path to it. "Your father was in an accident. Your mother's heart gave out from the shock. We need to move. Now."

"I was just on the phone with my father. He's fine, playing cards two doors down at the neighbor's. How could he be in an accident? Mother's check was clear last week. No way she had a heart attack. You'll have to do better than that if you're going to lie to me."

She looked at me as if I had lost my mind.

"I'm not lying. Please. Just trust me."

As I spoke, Enzo shifted, sliding half a step in front of her, as if I were the one who came to do her harm. There was a beat, and then he laughed, a shade too soon, and let his hand drift to the back of his neck.

"Salvatore, why go to such lengths? Adriana wanted an evening with me. Why put such ugly words on her mother and father?"

Before I could set him straight, he pressed on. "They loved you like their own son. And this is how you pay them back? That's low. Even I'm losing respect for you."

He took Adriana's hand and drew her away.

"I'm out of patience. Get back home already."

Adriana waved me off, cold, dismissing me like I was nothing more than an annoyance in her path.

At that moment, all I could focus on was getting her to the infirmary.

The Doc had warned that the Don might not pull through, and Adriana was the only hope for Renata.

My pride meant nothing now, less than nothing.

I bolted over to stop Adriana, desperation cracking my voice. "I swear on the Family, I'm not lying. Your mother and father are in deep trouble. Please, just come with me."

She looked at me the way you look at a man running a con, so I pulled out my phone with trembling hands.

"You don't believe me? I'll get the Doc on the line this second."

Adriana's eyes sparked with anger. "If any of that were true, word would have reached me by now."

I wanted to tell her that her phone had been dark all night, that no one in the world could have reached her.

But before I could get the words out, Enzo cut in.

He laughed a beat too early, before there was anything to laugh at, and his hand drifted to the back of his neck. "Run out of stories, have you? Look, I understand. You're eaten up because Adriana's out with me tonight. We're just old friends, amico. No need to play the jealous husband."

"Be a bigger man than this. Acting petty and jealous only pushes her further from you."

"But dragging her family into it? Using their lives as a chip on the table? That's low, even for you."

He stood there, arms folded, looking down the length of his nose at me as though he had honor to spare.

He was the last man alive with the right to preach it.

"Mind your own affairs. This is between my wife and me." The anger boiled over, and every scrap of my calm burned away.

The anger boiled over, and every scrap of my calm burned away.

A wiser man would have held his tongue by now. Not Enzo. Never Enzo.

He turned to Adriana, arranging his face into a wounded thing. "You see, Adriana? I told you exactly how he'd be."

Adriana's face went dark as a storm rolling in off the water.

"What is wrong with you? Why can't you just leave it alone? I wanted one quiet night with Enzo, and you're making a war out of nothing."

"I've been buried in work for weeks. I finally get an hour to breathe, and I can't spend it with a friend?"

"Ever hear of giving someone room? Enzo has done nothing but treat me kindly, and you treat him like dirt beneath your shoe. Is this who you are?"

She was right up in my face, her finger nearly against my nose.

I had no time to trade blows over any of it, not with the Don and Renata hanging by a thread in that back room.

I forced down the turmoil rising in my chest.

Sweat slid down my temple. I wiped it away and pleaded in a low voice, "They're on the table right now, both of them. Your mother, your father. Are you truly going to leave them there for a drink?"

Adriana paused. For a breath she seemed to catch the truth in my voice.

"Adriana, look. It's the old crowd from the neighborhood."

Enzo pointed, all delight, toward a restaurant down the block.

Through the tall glass, a couple at a table caught sight of them and lifted their hands in a wave.

"What are the odds? Haven't seen those two in years. Come, let's sit with them."

Adriana turned to go. I caught her arm, desperate.

"We're out of time. I am not lying to you. Your parents are waiting for you. You're their only child. Don't miss the last words your father has left, don't stand by and watch your mother slip away."

Enzo was relentless, his voice gone to ice. "Salvatore. Are you finished with the theatrics? Enough."

He began to draw Adriana away by the hand.

She went with him. Without a second thought, she chose him.

The thought of the Don and Renata dying alone in that room crushed something inside me. Tears flooded my eyes, and I dropped to my knees on the pavement.

"Adriana, if I've spoken one lie, let the sky come down on me. Please. Come to the infirmary with me. I'm begging you."

Adriana paused, clearly torn.

"Salvatore, can you ever just let it go? Adriana's always been patient, avoiding fights with you. Why can't you let her have some downtime with old friends? Does her whole life have to be blood and duty and answering to you?"

Enzo was visibly agitated, playing me like the villain of the century for the benefit of the men watching from the restaurant steps. His look of disgust was plain as day. He touched the back of his neck, a small flinch he could never quite train out of himself, then took a slow breath.

"Maybe you should just go with him, Adriana," he said, his voice pitched to shake at exactly the right moment. "I'll smooth things over with the others. After all, a husband comes before friends. That's the way of things, isn't it?"

Without another word, he turned and crossed the street toward the restaurant, not looking back, every step a wager he already knew he'd win.

The tactic worked like a charm. Adriana dropped everything and went after him.

As she went, she threw a fierce warning over her shoulder. "Next time you dare curse my parents, we're through!"

No matter how loudly I called after her, she wouldn't stop.

How could a Don and a matriarch of such honor have raised someone so cold, so stubborn?

One phone call would have confirmed the truth. She stubbornly refused to make it.

Torn between her own blood and her first love, her heart had long since tipped toward him, and there was no looking back.

How could she be so certain I was lying?

After all our years bound to the same Family, didn't she trust me at all?

The Doc called again, panic bleeding through the line. "The Don and Renata are fading fast. Why aren't you and Adriana here yet?"

I got to the car and drove hard back to the safe-house clinic, the city's dead territory streaking past the windows.

The Don didn't make it. He was gone by the time I reached the door.

Holding back the tears, I went to see Renata one last time.

The machines were off. She lay there in the dim room, gasping for her last breaths, silently waiting. Somewhere down the corridor a soldier stood watch, and even he had gone still, as if the whole house were holding its breath with her.

Hearing my footsteps, she slowly turned her head. When she understood I had come alone, the faint light in her eyes flickered out.

"Where... where's Adriana...?"

I couldn't bear to look into her eyes. My hands shook as I closed them around hers.

If I'd known I couldn't bring Adriana back, I wouldn't have left. I could have stayed with them a little longer.

I couldn't tell her the Don was already gone. I couldn't tell her that her beloved daughter was across town, drinking and laughing with the enemy's charmer.

"Mamma, Adriana's tied up with a patient. She couldn't get free."

"That's... that's a healer's duty... I don't blame her..."

Adriana had always been the finest of us, from a girl with a scalpel steadier than grown men's to the surgeon who could pull a dying capo back from the other side. She was the pride of the bloodline.

Now I felt nothing but heartache.

I hated that I couldn't bring Adriana back. I hated that she listened only to Enzo Barone.

"Salvatore... you've been a good son... I only wish I could see Adriana one more time..."

Those were Renata's last words.

In her final moments, all she wanted was to see her daughter.

But where was Adriana?

She was reliving old times with her first love.

I fought the tears. They came anyway.

I tried calling Adriana again.

No answer.

Fighting through the grief, I saw to the Don and Renata's final arrangements.

They had lived plainly for people of their standing and wanted no spectacle, only a quiet farewell. I saw them cremated and their ashes laid together, as they would have wanted.

Life is fleeting. In an instant, two lives that had held the whole Family together were gone.

On the way home, I called Adriana several more times.

Still no answer.

She hadn't gone to the infirmary. She was still with Enzo.

Holding the urns, I sat on the sofa in the silent house, haunted by the memory of their warm faces, the Don folding his hands at the head of the Sunday table, Renata pressing that worn handkerchief between her palms. The tears flowed freely again.

Later that afternoon, as I went out to see about the consecrated ground where they would rest, I met Adriana downstairs.

She stepped out of Enzo's car, their goodbye lingering too long, their eyes nearly melting into each other.

When she saw me, her smile vanished, replaced by a frosty expression. "Where are you off to?"

I tried to move past her. She caught my arm, fierce, her thumb going still against the ring on her finger for one instant before her grip tightened.

Noticing the black armband I wore, she asked, puzzled, "Why are you wearing that?"